Politics, Power, and Preventive ActionZenko covers the U.S. national security debate and offers insight on developments in international security and conflict prevention.2015-07-28T19:09:08Zhttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/feed/atom/WordPressGuest Blogger for Micah Zenkohttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/?p=61372015-07-28T19:09:08Z2015-07-28T19:09:08ZSamantha Andrews is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. As the United...]]>

Samantha Andrews is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations.

As the United States provides targeting assistance to the Saudi-led Gulf Cooperation Council in Yemen, it should consider that its allies’ standards for target selection may be less rigorous. However, the United States is still partially responsible for airstrikes enabled with its intelligence. Contrary to the official U.S. position that it remains in a “non-combat advisory and coordinating role to the Saudi-led campaign,” this enabling support makes the United States a combatant in the Yemen air campaign. Even if the United States is not pulling the trigger, the “live intelligence feeds from surveillance flights over Yemen” that “help Saudi Arabia decide what and where to bomb” are indispensable for the launch of airstrikes against Houthi rebels.

Recognizing U.S. responsibility and enabling combat role could help to limit the inextricably high number of civilian casualties resulting from coalition airstrikes by increasingly accountability among allies. Shortly after the Saudi-led coalition began Operation Decisive Storm in Yemen on March 26, the United Nations reported the first civilian casualties. On March 31, an airstrike hit a dairy factory, killing 31 civilians. Since then, the United Nations reported on at least 9 other airstrikes that killed a total of 329 civilians, including at least 35 children, and wounded 356 others. This includes an incident on July 6 when coalition airstrikes hit two separate provinces, killing 76, but excludes the initial estimates from July 24 that airstrikes reportedly killed at least 120 civilians.

Even though U.S. intelligence is indispensable for coalition airstrikes, the Obama administration’s response to reports of civilian casualties has been to shift the blame to the Saudis or Houthi rebels. On May 6, White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest responded to a question about concerns for civilian casualties stating, “We certainly are pleased that the Saudis have indicated a willingness to scale back their military efforts, but we haven’t seen a corresponding response from the Houthi rebels.” Later, on July 6, State Department Spokesperson John Kirby responded to a direct question about the Saudi-led coalition’s “pattern of attacks, destroying civilian homes and resulting in scores of civilian deaths and injuries” by suggesting that he would let Saudi Arabia “speak to their operational capabilities and performance.” In both cases, there was no mention of the U.S. role.

There is precedent for providing joint targeting assistance to U.S. allies while avoiding culpability for civilian casualties resulting from airstrikes. In 2007, the United States established the Combined Intelligence Fusion Cell in Ankara, Turkey to provide real-time intelligence feeds to the Turkish military targeting Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK, members in northern Iraq. Similar to the advisory role that the United States plays in the Saudi-led coalition, the United States worked “side-by-side” with the Turkish military “to analyze incoming intelligence.” In total, U.S. intelligence facilitated over two hundred cross-border and artillery strikes. Yet, when the Turkish military used surveillance from a U.S Predator drone on December 8, 2011, to mistakenly drop a bomb that killed thirty-four civilians, a senior Pentagon official announced, “The Turks made the call. It wasn’t an American decision.”

This response reveals consequential flaws in joint target selection. According to a former senior U.S. military official involved in sharing intelligence with Turkey before the December attack, he and his fellow officers were troubled by the Turks notion of “guilt by association” in selecting targets. Whereas U.S. standards for target selection seek a high degree of confidence in discriminating between combatants and non-combatants, the Turkish military blurred this distinction. Further, the U.S. Predator drone that initially identified the civilian caravan was asked to fly offsite before the airstrike. Only when the drone was out of range, and could no longer monitor the attack, did Turkish warplanes strike. Subsequently, any potential intelligence the United States could have provided to the Turkish military about the civilian nature of the caravan was missed. Startlingly, U.S. officials admitted that compliance with Turkish requests was standard procedure.

To minimize civilian casualties in Yemen, the Obama administration should consider the lessons from the Combined Intelligence Fusion Cell. Specifically, it should reevaluate its assistance to Saudi Arabia to make it contingent upon greater involvement in joint target selection and approval. Live intelligence feeds from drones should be used to conduct damage assessment, including confirming the impact of the weapon. In an environment where the United States and its allies have limited intelligence on the ground, these considerations would encourage allies to exercise greater discrimination and alleviate potentially negative consequences for the United States.

As the Obama administration seeks “to mobilize allies and partners to share the burden” of military action, it should bear in mind that U.S. allies will not always apply the same rigorous standards to avoid civilian casualties. When airstrikes are enabled with U.S. intelligence, the country should acknowledge its enabling role, accepting at least partial responsibility for the collateral damage, and hold its partners to higher standards. Only then can the United States begin to put in place joint targeting measures to minimize civilian casualties.

]]>1Micah Zenkohttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/?p=61242015-07-24T21:00:56Z2015-07-24T21:00:56ZDion Nissenbaum, “Turkey to Let U.S. Military Launch Strikes Against Islamic State From Turkish Soil,” Wall Street Journal, June 23,...]]>

The deal, agreed to by President Barack Obama and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, will allow the U.S. to use Incirlik Air Base in eastern Turkey to send manned and unmanned planes to attack Islamic State fighters, the officials said. The two leaders spoke on Wednesday, the White House said.

(3PA: In an earlier book, I wrote extensively about the limits that Turkey placed on U.S. military access to Incirlik airbase from 1991 to 2003. For an abridged version, see my article about why U.S. drones can’t fly from or over every single country:

“For example, basing rights agreements can limit the number of civilian, military, and contractor personnel at an airbase or post; what access they have to the electromagnetic spectrum; what types of aircraft they can fly; how many sorties they can conduct per day; when those sorties can occur and how long they can last; whether the aircraft can drop bombs on another country and what sort of bombs; and whether they can use lethal force in self-defense. When the United States led the enforcement of the northern no-fly zone over Iraq from the Incirlik Air Base in southern Turkey from 1991 to 2003, a Turkish military official at the rank of lieutenant colonel or higher was always on board U.S. Air Force AWACS planes, monitoring the airspace to assure that the United States did not violate its highly restrictive basing agreement.”)

Rapid advances in technology have led to the global proliferation of inexpensive, networked sensors that are now providing significant new levels of societal transparency. As a result of the increase in quality, quantity, connectivity and availability of open information and crowd-sourced analysis, the landscape for verifying compliance with international treaties has been greatly broadened. Of comparable importance is the impact more generally on tracking activities potentially threatening to US and international security.

These technologies present both challenges and opportunities for the government to make effective use of the available information and analysis. Agility will be required in adopting the new technologies and exploiting the data. To this end, government should give high priority to 1) tracking public sector activities involving sensor development and data sharing in support of increased transparency; and 2) developing a strategic plan for keeping up with the evolving protocols for collecting, transmitting and analyzing the resulting data. The data are significant in arms control treaty verification and monitoring.

Raw data obtained by these public means may be reliably validated by independent confirmation, supported by checks for internal consistency from quantitative analysis of the clutter (as distinct from errors) in the data. There is an opportunity to enhance transparency and confidence through cooperative activities with other nations, and through exchanges among technical experts in areas of mutual interest such as the environment, climate and public health. We also recommend training and tasking staff in foreign missions to identify appropriate sources of open information, and engaging the business community to share open source information and analysis. Finally, we advocate keeping open source information and analysis open to the greatest degree possible and appropriate so as to encourage vetting as well as increased transparency. (p. 65)

(3PA: The JASONs is an independent scientific advisory group that has conducted classified and unclassified research projects for the U.S. government on national security matters since 1960.)

To date, the CT [Counterterrorism] Bureau has not evaluated the CVE [Countering Violent Extremism] program despite having identified the program as a priority goal for the bureau. The bureau acknowledged that such an evaluation would help it to ensure accountability, better measure program impact and effectiveness, and shape future programming decisions, but has postponed plans to evaluate the CVE program every fiscal year since 2012. The bureau cited two main reasons for postponing these plans. First, the bureau said it is difficult to evaluate the CVE program given that its goal is to deny terrorist groups new recruits and measuring and attributing this negative effect can be a complex task. Second, the CVE program is a relatively new effort for the U.S. government and most of its partners, so evaluation methodologies are still evolving. As of June 2015, the CT Bureau was unsure what future evaluations it would undertake but indicated that it was working to finalize its evaluation plans for 2015. (p. 20)

(3PA: This means the bureau within the U.S. government that is most responsible for keeping people in other countries from becoming terrorists has not evaluated if its programs work.)

]]>0Micah Zenkohttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/?p=61302015-07-24T13:08:34Z2015-07-24T13:08:34ZIn an interview conducted yesterday, President Barack Obama made the following comment to BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel: You...]]>

In an interview conducted yesterday, President Barack Obama made the following comment to BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel:

You mentioned the issue of guns, that is an area where if you ask me where has been the one area where I feel that I’ve been most frustrated and most stymied it is the fact that the United States of America is the one advanced nation on earth in which we do not have sufficient common-sense, gun-safety laws. Even in the face of repeated mass killings.

And you know, if you look at the number of Americans killed since 9/11 by terrorism, it’s less than 100. If you look at the number that have been killed by gun violence, it’s in the tens of thousands.

It is understandable for the president to make this comparison given the overwhelming focus on terrorism and vast expansion of government counterterrorism authorities, versus the collective shoulder-shrug and tacit acceptance made in response to vastly more lethal gun deaths. However, this comparison is needlessly and factually incorrect.

The number of American citizens who have been killed by terrorism since 9/11 is actually 367. As noted, the vast majority of them have been tragically killed while living and working in Iraq or Afghanistan, not while residing within the United States. For a president who often proclaims that his “most sacred duty” as president “is to keep the American people safe,” his unawareness of the toll of terrorism is surprising. Hopefully, White House aides make him aware of his mistake lest he repeat again.

Data: For 2001, see the University of Maryland National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism’s Global Terrorism Database. For 2004, no U.S. government number was provided; this estimate is based upon the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs count of citizens deaths by “terrorist action.” For the remaining years, see the State Department’s annual Country Reports on Terrorism.

]]>0Guest Blogger for Micah Zenkohttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/?p=61182015-07-22T13:20:27Z2015-07-22T13:19:52ZPatrick Romano is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. Colombian President Juan...]]>

Patrick Romano is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos’s unrelenting opposition to negotiating a bilateral ceasefire with left-wing guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) threatens to derail current peace talks and indefinitely perpetuate the longest conflict in the Western Hemisphere. Though the war began in 1964, over the past fifty years more than 220,000 Colombians—80 percent civilians—have lost their lives and more than five million have been displaced. The conflict has also fueled the illegal drug trade, as the FARC continues to fund itself through the production and trafficking of cocaine and heroin. Since negotiations between Santos and FARC leaders began in October 2012, the negotiators have reached agreements on three of five points: land reform, political participation, and illicit narcotics. The two remaining issues, the thorniest of all, deal with rights and reparations for the conflict’s victims and disarmament of the rebels. While this progress could be deemed a partial success, the escalation of violence since the FARC’s suspension of its unilateral ceasefire in May threatens to end the peace process altogether.

With declining popular support for a peace accord, the longer Santos waits to take action to de-escalate the conflict, the less likely a final peace agreement will be reached. On July 8, the FARC announced a new, one-month unilateral ceasefire, effective July 20, but this will be insufficient for reducing long-term instability for two reasons. First, even if the FARC upholds the ceasefire—its sixth since peace talks began—one month will not be enough time to reach an agreement on the remaining issues of victims’ rights and disarmament, as it has taken nearly three years to reach consensus on the other three points. Second, Santos’ July 12 announcement that his government would scale down military action to accelerate negotiations does not explicitly promise—as a formal bilateral ceasefire would—that the military will not attack FARC rebels or resources. Given that an agreement will likely not be reached within a month, the only strategic option left to FARC commanders is to plan for a resumption of hostilities. Thus, when the ceasefire expires, Colombia will (at best) remain unstable, protracting the risk to civilians and destruction of critical infrastructure.

A formal, written bilateral ceasefire—with a longer duration of four to six months and a potential to be renewed—will provide adequate time and stability to settle the remaining issues in the peace negotiations. To date, Santos has stated repeatedly that he will never agree to one, claiming that the FARC, who have ultimately suspended all previous ceasefires, will use the opportunity to regroup for new attacks. The Santos administration is also concerned that the FARC could continue to fundraise through drug trafficking and extortion. While both are legitimate dangers, an independent mediating body—perhaps led by the guarantors of the talks, Norway and Cuba—could assuage these concerns if given adequate time and access to monitor conflict areas and FARC strongholds in order to verify that both sides are upholding the ceasefire terms. A successful, unbroken bilateral ceasefire could also help alleviate disagreements over FARC disarmament, as FARC leaders may feel more secure that giving up their arms will not lead to their annihilation by Colombian forces.

The United States—Colombia’s most intrinsic ally in terms of monetary, military, and diplomatic support—appointed Bernard Aronson as special envoy to the peace talks. In a House hearing on June 24, Aronson stated that his role is to advise and counsel Santos, not to impose his opinion or publicly undermine Santos. However, without pushing his opinion forcefully or publicly, Aronson could present the conditions listed above to Santos, showing him the benefits of a bilateral ceasefire, including the significant progress in the peace process that it will demonstrate to his increasingly disengaged constituency and the extended time it will give negotiators. A failure to either de-escalate the conflict or accelerate negotiations would be an embarrassment for U.S. diplomacy, but is likely if Santos continues to rule out a bilateral ceasefire. The benefits of a longer ceasefire and negotiated settlement for U.S. security, economic, and political interests far outweigh the potential consequences of another failed ceasefire:

• Colombia is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid in Latin America. The State Department ranks the FARC as one of the largest drug traffickers in the world, and through “Plan Colombia,” an aid initiative that began in the late 1990s, the United States has provided billions of dollars in aid to the Colombian government, mainly to combat the illicit drug trade. A ceasefire that stipulates—and independently verifies over time—that the guerrillas stop fundraising through the drug trade would be a significant return on the U.S. investment in Colombia and a way to reduce the $162 million in counter-narcotics aid planned for Colombia in 2016.

• U.S. reputation in Latin America has waned in the past two decades, but the U.S.-Colombia relationship remains one of the strongest, and bilateral trade has increased significantly since the signing of the U.S.-Colombia Free Trade Agreement in 2012. This mutually beneficial relationship bolsters the U.S. reputation in a region where the influence of China and India is expanding. As Latin American economies continue to grow, it is important for U.S. trade interests to maintain a favorable reputation in the region, and destabilization due to the FARC conflict threatens the good example of the U.S.-Colombia partnership.

• The United States purports to promote human rights and the rule of law in the Americas, and defeating the FARC, a U.S.-designated terrorist organization, is an important part of this agenda. However, progress was set back when Human Rights Watch recently alleged that the Colombian military killed innocent civilians and passed them off as guerrillas, and the top Colombian brass knew about it. Given the close U.S. partnership with the Colombian military, these human rights abuses risk conveying hypocrisy to other Latin American nations, such as Venezuela and Cuba, which the United States has condemned for similar issues of state violence.

If the United States wishes to see the payout from its investments in Colombia, Aronson should demonstrate the benefits of a long-term, bilateral ceasefire and negotiated settlement to Santos, and the consequences of failure, including a dissatisfied public. The longer it takes to establish a bilateral ceasefire, the less likely it is that a lasting peace will be reached.

]]>0Micah Zenkohttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/?p=61132015-07-20T15:48:38Z2015-07-20T14:26:21ZWithout any formal announcement from Washington, the United States became further militarily committed to the civil war in Syria last...]]>

Without any formal announcement from Washington, the United States became further militarily committed to the civil war in Syria last week. It was reported that the first wave of a few dozen U.S.-trained Syrian rebels had crossed the Jordanian border into Syria on July 12. They were reportedly instructed to integrate themselves into other rebel units in order to increase the opposition forces’ overall combat effectiveness. Commander Elissa Smith, a Pentagon spokesperson, wrote that rebels are expected to “coordinate with other moderate opposition forces to build trust between organizations that are countering ISIL.”

This consequential development is one of the many barely noticed examples of missioncreep that have unfolded since the fight against the self-declared Islamic State began last summer. However, this latest step is unique in that it has occurred without the Obama administration offering any clarification of important questions posed by Congressional overseers over the past ten months. Unless there is a secret plan that adequately answers these questions, the Syria train-and-equip program is one of the more poorly conceived and implausible foreign policy schemes in modern history.

Since last September, military officials in the Middle East have been meeting with exiled rebel leaders and canvassing former fighters in refugee camps to assemble this force. Given the poor U.S. record of developing “moderate” proxy forces that will neither harm civilians nor eventually turn against U.S. interests, the vetting of the rebels included psychological evaluations and biometric screenings. While there are tens of thousands of rebels willing to receive training and equipment to go after the Assad regime, few are willing to fight the Islamic State. The initial plans were to train 5,400 over the first year and between 5,000 and 5,500 each consecutive year to reach 15,000. Given this ambitious agenda, senators were stunned two weeks ago when Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter acknowledged, “As of July 3, we are currently training about 60 fighters,” at a reported cost of $36 million so far.

The apparent plans for the U.S.-backed rebels in Syria are murky and implausible. Former Pentagon spokesperson Rear Admiral John Kirby described the three things the trained rebels will do in Syria: “One…to defend their own communities and their own citizens and go back to their own towns and cities and help defend their neighbors. Two, to eventually go on the offensive against ISIL inside Syria. And three, to help work with political opposition leaders towards a political solution in Syria.” The implicit threat offered both privately and publicly by Pentagon officials is that if the trained rebels do not follow this prioritized list of requirements, they will lose U.S. military support and equipment.

Given that they are explicitly backed by the United States, and have been publicly identified by local journalists, these rebels will be an especially attractive target for attacks by the Islamic State, the Syrian military, and other rebel forces. As Carter pledged last week, “We have some obligations to them once they are inserted in the field.” What exactly is the extent of U.S. support beyond “some obligations”? This question has gone unanswered since the plan to train and arm Syrian rebels emerged, but it is increasingly pressing now that they are on the ground in Syria.

On September 16, 2014, then-Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel said U.S. support to Syrian rebels was under debate: “We haven’t really done anything but come up with a concept.” Five months later, on February 24, 2015, Secretary of State John Kerry said the same thing: “The authorization is such that defending those who are engaged in the fight of ISIL, it seems to me, is an important part of defeating ISIL. But that’s a debate as to how that’s implemented that is taking place in the administration.” Carter’s recent remarks were no different: “We have an obligation….We’re going to have to decide exactly under what conditions and what way we’ll make that tactical decision when we introduce them.”

Either the White House has not decided what degree of support the United States will provide, or it has simply refused to state this publicly for over ten months. Given that the United States has made such a consequential overt commitment to these rebels, this should be made plain for Congress and the American public immediately. More troubling, Carter admitted that the United States has not even told the rebels what support they would receive once they were in Syria; presumably, they are finding this out the hard way now.

One can imagine many situations where the United States would be forced to deepen its involvement in Syria’s civil war on behalf of these initial sixty rebels. For example, will the United States provide close air support if the rebels attack Syrian forces instead of the Islamic State? Will it withhold close air support when aggressors against the rebels are not the Islamic State, but rather the Syrian army, government-sponsored militias, or other rebel forces? Will it provide increasingly advanced weapons if the rebels claim they need them in order to maintain momentum (rest assured, they will request them)? Also, given that U.S.-vetted rebels are fighting alongside non-vetted rebels, will the United States provide guns and ammunition to the former, but not the latter? And what if they share? Moreover, if the rebels are facing defeat or capture like the Cuban exiles in 1961, will President Obama authorize a high-risk, helicopter-borne special operations force to extract them from Syria?

Finally, it is unknown if this arrangement is even legal under U.S. law. Back in March, Senator Bob Corker (R-TN) asked Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey if the military had the existing legal authority to provide air cover to Syrian rebels. Dempsey deferred to “those with that expertise.” Then again last week, Carter was asked the same thing and replied, “I am not sure about the legalities of it, Senator, to be quite honest.” That was only thirteen days ago. There has been no follow-up statement that clarifies what is the legal basis for the United States to provide air support for these rebels under any of the scenarios described above. Sadly, nobody on Capitol Hill has publicly declared that they have any problem with this.

Now that the first U.S.-backed Syrian rebels have been deployed, resolving the issue of what support the U.S. military will provide and under what legal basis is crucial as they will be vastly outmanned and outgunned by the Syrian military (178,000 forces) and Islamic State (20,000 and 31,500 fighters). Though virtually nobody in Washington appears to care about this latest instance of mission creep, the White House still should provide answers to these critical questions.

(3PA: Note that “only” 70,000 people worldwide die from all forms of conflict and/or terrorism. More Americans die from diseases related to sugar-sweetened beverage consumption than the average 15,473 Americans killed in violent deaths each year, or the 11,208 killed by firearm homicides.)

“If we try to do everything ourselves all across the Middle East, all across North Africa, we’ll be playing Whack-a-Mole and there will be a whole lot of unintended consequences that ultimately make us less secure.”

(3PA: Compare this to what Assistant Defense Secretary for Special Operations and Low Intensity Conflict Michael Sheehan proclaimed in June 2013, which directly contradicts Obama: “Whack-a-Mole, in my view, works because terrorists aren’t plastic things that pop up again. When you kill them, they don’t come back. Yes, somebody else may come back, but that guy is probably less effective, less trained, and by the way, knows his buddy before him got…killed.”)

Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC): General Dempsey, would you agree that there’re more terrorist organizations with more safe havens, with more weapons, with more capability, with more men to strike the homeland than any time since 9/11?

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Martin Dempsey: Yes.

Graham: Do you believe that ISIL is expanding in other countries as we speak?

Dempsey: Yes.

(3PA: Indeed, the number of terrorist attacks, their lethality, as well as the size of terrorist organizations has worsened in past years. Note that Sen. Graham did not follow up to ask why terrorist organizations were larger and more capable. U.S. officials are too vested in the country’s counterterrorism strategy—nearly unchanged over the past thirteen years—to recognize that it is failing. To overcome this, I have suggested that a National Commission on the War on Terrorism be established to evaluate strategic documents and the effectiveness of counterterrorism policies to date, analyze underlying reasons for homegrown terrorism, and provide policy recommendations.)

QUESTION: John, what about Said’s first question, which was: What are you doing to try to – I don’t know – improve the accuracy or somehow dissuade the Saudis from hitting civilian areas? I mean, just today, there was a strike that killed dozens of civilians.

KIRBY: Well, look. We remain in close touch with the Saudi Government regarding a wide range of issues. With respect to Yemen, I’d refer you to them for discussion of their operational details. That’s really for the Saudi Government to speak to. And we take all accounts and reports of civilian casualties seriously, and again, have been very clear about our desire to see a humanitarian pause.

(3PA: The Saudi-led coalition would not be conducting these airstrikes, which are killing civilians, without the enabling capabilities being provided by the United States, primarily targeting intelligence, air refueling, combat search and rescue, and vessel searches.)

(3PA: I highly recommend this report, which is the most well researched and comprehensive study of the 2011 air war in Libya. Unfortunately, it came out shortly after I published a similar chart, listed below, comparing the average strike sorties per day and average bombs dropped per day in various air wars since the 1990s.)

]]>0Guest Blogger for Micah Zenkohttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/?p=60932015-07-07T19:24:33Z2015-07-07T19:24:33ZSamantha Andrews is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations. Today’s reported car...]]>

Samantha Andrews is an intern in the Center for Preventive Action at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Today’s reported car bombing in Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, is further evidence that, while the self-declared Islamic State may currently be the underdog in the jihadi rivalry unfolding in Yemen, it is steadily becoming stronger. Political instability resulting from the Houthi uprising, and subsequent Saudi-led intervention, has created a power vacuum in which the Islamic State is exerting its influence. Combined with its recent string of deadly attacks in Yemen and increase in affiliate groups, the group poses a direct challenge to Yemen’s largest jihadist group—al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP).

Eight months after Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi announced his group’s expansion into the country, its numbers are estimated to have grown from eighty to three hundred. By January 2015, the Islamic State was reported to have a presence in at least three provinces in southern and central Yemen. Suicide bombings carried out on March 20 in Sanaa by an affiliate marked the group’s first major attack in the country, killing more than 130 people. Since then, the Islamic State and its affiliates have conducted at least five other attacks, including three more bombings in Sanaa within the last two months. Further, the number of affiliates appears to be growing. In April, an Islamic State-affiliated group, the Soldiers of the Caliphate in Yemen, released a video announcing that they “have come to Yemen.” Four days later, Yemen’s Second Mountaineer Brigade released a video showing the beheading of four Yemeni soldiers and shooting of ten others. The exact number of IS-affiliate groups in Yemen is unknown.

While the Islamic State’s presence in Yemen is still small in comparison to AQAP, its growth challenges AQAP’s entrenched power in the country, which has remained nearly unopposed by the intrusion of other jihadist rivals since 2009. Now, its overlapping ideology with the Islamic State threatens to draw away critical support. A budding rivalry is increasingly evident. In response to al-Baghdadi’s declaration, AQAP quickly released a counterstatement calling the move “illegitimate.” Whereas AQAP had previously supported the Islamic State—declaring “solidarity with our Muslim brothers in Iraq”—this marked the beginning of the rivalry that is unfolding in Yemen today.

A recent shift in AQAP’s tactics suggests that it is attempting to win over more loyalty from the Yemeni population. Historically, AQAP, like the Islamic State, has seized territory and imposed strict Islamic law. However, when AQAP seized Al-Mukala, Yemen’s fifth largest city, three months ago, it relinquished control to a civilian council, maintaining only a single police station to arbitrate disputes. It then gave the council $4 million to provide public services. This contrasts with life under Islamic State-rule, which imposes its rule in almost all political and social matters. Since this shift in AQAP’s tactics is unprecedented, it may believe that offering greater autonomy to the local populace will broaden its appeal.

Even more problematic, U.S. operations against AQAP may be helping the Islamic State expand. Currently, U.S. lethal counterterrorism operations in Yemen target only AQAP operatives and leaders. Killing them, which even temporarily weakens the group, could provide the Islamic State with an opportunity to fill a power vacuum and expand territorially. For example, the White House announced just two weeks ago that Nasir al-Wahishi, al-Qaeda’s second in command and leader of AQAP, had been killed in a U.S. counterterrorism operation in Yemen. What the White House calls a “major blow to AQAP” may actually also be a win for the Islamic State, whose objective is to grow its influence in those provinces dominated by AQAP.

The expansion and entrenchment of the Islamic State into Yemen threatens to shift the balance of power among jihadis that has long favored AQAP. In order to bring the United States “closer to degrading and ultimately defeating these groups,” the Obama administration will have to adapt its counterterrorism strategies to deal with the dynamics of the new rivalry. Otherwise, the United States risks inadvertently strengthening the Islamic State in Yemen and perpetuating a “whack-a-mole” strategy in the Middle East.

]]>1Micah Zenkohttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/?p=60842015-07-06T20:06:54Z2015-07-06T18:59:57ZWith President Barack Obama visiting the Pentagon to assess progress in the U.S.-led air campaign against the self-declared Islamic State,...]]>

With President Barack Obama visiting the Pentagon to assess progress in the U.S.-led air campaign against the self-declared Islamic State, which enters its twelfth month this week, it is a good time to evaluate a main criticism of the air war: not enough bombs are being dropped. Policymakers, retired military officials, and pundits offer a variety of reasons for this lack of airstrikes. Some claim that Washington-created rules of engagement are restricting whole categories of targets (particularly oil convoys heading to Turkey), others that military lawyers conducting collateral damage estimates are prohibiting strikes that might cause unwanted harm, or that there are no U.S. joint tactical air controllers on the ground to call in precision strikes.

The arguments these critics make is that an undue concern for civilian casualties is allowing the Islamic State to survive and thrive in parts of Iraq and Syria. This is despite the fact that, according to a U.S. military estimate from May, some 12,500 Islamic State fighters have been killed and 7,655 pieces of their equipment and infrastructure have been damaged or destroyed. Notably, the most recent U.S. intelligence estimate about the size range of the Islamic State remains between 20,000 and 31,500. Meaning, despite killing 12,500 supporters of the group, a comparable number of indigenous or foreign fighters have already replaced them. This is yet another non-state group that the United States will not be able to eliminate with bombs alone.

The inherent difficulty with identifying why there have been relatively so few strikes (more on that below) is that the rules of engagement and collateral damage estimate methods are classified. Moreover, the public does not know the process by which targets are being selected, vetted, and approved by the combined joint task force that is running the air campaign. Today, Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter noted that the same airstrikes in Syria are conducted “with local forces nominating targets, we then validate those targets.” According to every air campaign planner who I have spoken with, if those were U.S. forces nominating the targets, there would be an increase in the overall number, but it still would not be markedly higher.

The primary reason for the limit in strikes, as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey described during a June 17 hearing before the House Armed Services Committee: “The air power’s limitation is not about forward air controller or U.S. service men and women forward. It’s about the intermingling of a significant number of groups.” The U.S. military still remarkably claims that it does not conclusively believe it has killed even one civilian. On June 5, Lt. Gen. John W. Hesterman III, combined forces air component commander, stated: “We haven’t seen any evidence of civilian casualties so far, but we’ll conscientiously look into it as we do every allegation.” Earlier, U.S. Central Command acknowledged that it had “likely” killed two children in a November airstrike in Syria. There are also five ongoing investigations into claims of civilian casualties, according to Gen. Thomas Weidley, chief of staff for Combined Joint Task Force-Operation Inherent Resolve. Meanwhile, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a source that some of these same policymakers and pundits cite when it is convenient for their argumentation, recently estimated that coalition airstrikes had killed 162 civilians, including 51 children and 35 women.

Finally, while there are basing access limitations, such as those imposed by the government of Turkey regarding the Incirlik Air Base, there is not a limit in the number of available aircraft. As Gen. Dempsey noted a few weeks ago: “397 strike aircraft and 1,600 pilots…are flying these missions over Iraq and Syria.” That is a robust number comparatively speaking, making it more than the seventeen-day Bosnian strikes in 1995, the opening of the Kosovo air war in 1999, or the 2011 regime change campaign in Libya. In addition, coalition pilots have thus far faced a relatively passive air defense system in Syria, although a Predator drone was shot down over Syria on March 17, and another crashed in Iraq on June 22, though the reason why remains unclear.

To put Operation Inherent Resolve in some perspective with recent U.S.-led air campaigns, see the chart below. Understand that these are all distinct military operations with their own objectives, combination of coalition partners, and rules of engagement, and that this data is challenging to compile. However, for a military campaign that allegedly intends to inflict a “lasting defeat” on the dispersed and large militant army that is the Islamic State, there is a relatively limited—though understandable given the concern of civilian casualties—number of bombs being dropped each day.

Several nations experimented with military ballooning in the mid-nineteenth century, despite limitations such as lack of controllability. The key factor in whether or not the belligerents perceived ballooning as valuable was the type of warfare involved. When balloons were used in static warfare, such as siege conditions, their usefulness usually encouraged further experimentation. The American Civil War draws some stark contrasts between what balloons could do during static warfare, such as the siege of Island No. 10, and what they could not do in fluid combat, as in the failure at First Bull Run. Later, Brazil employed former Union aeronauts during the siege of Humaita in Paraguay, following which the French pioneered balloon “air mail” from besieged Paris during the Franco-Prussian War. Enemy efforts to defeat ballooning included Prussian invention of what may be the world’s first purpose-built anti-aircraft gun, making the point that if an enemy thinks an innovation is valuable, then it is.

The authors study the influence of domestic political dissent and violence on incumbent dictators and their regimes. They argue that elite with an interest in preserving the regime hold dictators accountable when there is a significant increase in terrorism. To pinpoint the accountability of dictators to elite who are strongly invested in the current regime, the authors make a novel theoretical distinction between reshuffling coups that change the leader but leave the regime intact and regime-change coups that completely change the set of elites atop the regime. Using a new data set that distinguishes between these two coup types, the authors provide robust evidence that terrorism is a consistent predictor of reshuffling coups, whereas forms of dissent that require broader public participation and support, such as protests and insurgencies, are associated with regime-change coup attempts. This article is the first to show that incumbent dictators are held accountable for terrorist campaigns that occur on their watch.

Despite significant research on the efficacy and inadvertent humanitarian and political effects of economic sanctions, surprisingly little is known about the possible economic and financial consequences of sanctions for target economies. Synthesizing insights from the currency crisis literature with sanctions scholarship, we argue that economic sanctions are likely to trigger currency collapses, a major form of financial crisis that impedes economic growth and prosperity. We assert that economic coercion instigates currency crises by weakening the economy and creating political risks conducive to speculative attacks by currency traders. To substantiate the theoretical claims, we use time-series cross-national data for the 1970–2005 period. The results from the data analysis lend support for the hypothesis that sanctions undermine the financial stability of target countries. The findings also indicate that the adverse effect of economic coercion on the financial stability of target economies is likely to be conditioned by the severity of the coercion and the type of actors involved in the implementation of sanctions. The findings of this article add to the sanctions literature demonstrating how economic coercion could be detrimental to the target economy beyond the immediate effect on trade and investment. It also complements and adds to the literature on political economy of currency crises that has so far overlooked the significant role that economic coercion plays in financial crises.

I argue that when it comes to achieving a rebel group’s political goals, the disadvantages of terrorism generally outweigh its advantages. It is a cheap way to inflict pain on the other side, and terrorist groups are hard to eliminate completely, but it is useless for taking or holding territory. It may help signal commitment to a cause, but because it is cheap, it signals weakness rather than strength. It may be useful for provoking an overreaction by the government, but it also helps justify draconian measures to crush the rebellion. Its outrageous nature may help bring attention to a cause, but it also undermines legitimacy and alienates potential supporters. Terrorism may help achieve tactical results, but these apparently do not translate into strategic success. It may also be useful at lower levels of conflict or for groups that do not have the ability to wage full-scale war (a question I cannot yet address with available data). Empirically, I find much more support for the argument that terrorism is likely to backfire than for the notion that it is effective. Rebels who use terrorism do not win outright, and they are less likely to achieve concessions in a negotiated outcome. This negative effect may be somewhat attenuated when rebels fight against democracies rather than autocracies. But even in democratic states, terrorist rebels groups do not achieve victory and are unlikely to obtain concessions at the negotiating table. The short answer to the question “Do terrorist rebels win?” is “No.”

If terrorism is so ineffective, one might reasonably ask why rebel groups use it, especially rebels who are not fighting democratic governments. The answer may lie in the finding that civil wars in which terrorism is used last significantly longer than others. The use of terrorism contributes to rebels’ organizational survival. Rebels thus appear to face a dilemma—using terrorism as a tactic is good for the immediate goal of survival, but comes at the expense of the long-term political goals for which they are, ultimately (or ostensibly) fighting.

This study begins to shed light on the causes of terrorism, as well as its effects. I examine this question only briefly in this article, focusing on variables that might also affect war outcomes, to avoid spurious results. The results are intriguing, however. They cast doubt on the conventional wisdom that terrorism is a “weapon of the weak.” Among rebels fighting full-fledged civil wars, there is surprisingly little evidence that weaker groups are more likely to use terrorism than stronger ones. Nor is terrorism more likely, again contrary to conventional wisdom, in secessionist wars, or when rebels profess extreme aims. Terrorism is more likely, however, in civil wars in democracies, as many have argued, and where religion divides rebels from the government they fight. It is much less likely to be used in Africa, a finding that remains to be explained theoretically.

In this article, I seek to deepen our understanding of the peacetime spread of military ideas by focusing on the implementation phase of the diffusion process. That is, I assume that states not currently at war have made the decision to adopt an innovative military doctrine developed abroad and I explore the reasons why they are more or less likely to succeed in effecting their desired changes. Drawing on current research on military innovation and the diffusion of civilian organizational practices, I argue that the nature of bureaucratic politics within the adopting military is likely to condition the selection and capacity of the communications channels used to transmit information about innovative foreign military doctrines, and therefore to affect the likelihood of success or failure in implementing new methods of fighting. Specifically, I contend that when a large or influential group of actors within the armed forces strongly supports the adoption of a foreign military’s doctrine, states are more likely to contract missions— collections of advisers and instructors drawn from originating states— to facilitate the transfer of essential information about the new way of fighting. However, when a large or influential group within the military opposes some aspect of the doctrinal change, the group is likely to use its political and bureaucratic power to circumscribe the purview of a contracted mission or force reliance on less effective means of information transfer. We should therefore expect the greatest degree of implementation—and the highest levels of diffusion—when there is minimal resistance from the military to the adoption of a foreign doctrine.

The key task of this article is to specify a logic in which the deployment of troops overseas results in the employment of terrorism against the global interests of the deploying state…(p. 352)

My attrition-based theoretical logic implies that countries are likely to experience terrorist violence against their global interests emanating from those countries to which they deploy troops…(p. 362)

In some of the notable cases of territorial terrorism outlined in the early portions of this article, it is clear that terrorist violence has been employed on a large scale (alongside more expansive forms of insurgency) against the military assets of the deploying state. This is certainly true of recent US and Coalition deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, for instance. However, my theoretical logic suggests that territorially motivated terrorism ought to manifest itself not only in the form of attacks against the military but also against the wider set of global interests of the deploying state. Accordingly, it is important to demonstrate that the arrival of troops on the ground does not only provide additional suitable targets for terrorist violence but also has the effect of increasing the likelihood of attacks against the nonmilitary interests of the deploying state. Accordingly, I next present the results of a test in which attacks against military targets—as defined by the GTD—are excluded from the dependent variable…In other words, it is apparent that troops on the ground do not exclusively provide additional targets; rather, troops on the ground also motivate the use of violence against the non-military interests and assets of the deploying state…(pp. 371-373)

This article has presented significant evidence to support the central logic of territorial terrorism: the deployment of troops overseas increases the likelihood of transnational terrorist attacks against the global interests of the deploying state. It appears as if terrorist groups encourage and exploit public territorial responses to the arrival of “foreign” troops on “home” territories by employing attrition-based strategies against deploying states. The effect of deploying troops is slightly larger for democratic states—suggesting that the use of violence in such circumstances is viewed as being efficient and legitimate…(p. 374)

Almost three-quarters of all the mass killing endings produced by regime change were achieved by principally domestic opponents through one of these pathways.

This means that regime change brought about by foreign military intervention endings is among the rarest of ways in which mass killing perpetrated by states against their own population ends. Overall, since 1945 fewer than one in ten episodes of state perpetrated mass killing have been terminated by foreign armed intervention. What is more, the frequency of foreign induced regime change has not changed significantly in line with the general decline of perpetrator-induced endings since the end of the Cold War, described earlier. In the post-Cold War era, mass atrocities are still more likely to end when the perpetrators choose to end them or at the hand of domestic opponents than they are to be ended by foreign armed intervention. If, as proponents of the moral hazard approach to humanitarian intervention (e.g. Kuperman, 2008) suggest, rebel groups believe that they can secure foreign intervention on their behalf by provoking governments into perpetrating mass atrocities, the historical record suggests they are deeply misguided…(p. 7)

Understandably, the duration of an episode seems to be important in influencing the overall number of estimated casualties. From the data presented here, it appears that episodes that end with regime change (and remember that most of these are produced by domestic forces) tend to be much longer in duration (more than twice as long based on a simple average of years) than those ended voluntarily by the perpetrating regime.Episodes that end with regime change tend also to be more deadly (based on simple averages of the clustered cases in the online appendix). This seems to be primarily a function of their longer duration because there is little discernible difference in the average intensity of the killing (i.e. average rate of killing over time) associated with different types of endings. The most likely explanation for the longer average duration associated with regime change endings is that determined domestic opposition prevents a state perpetrator from achieving its goals quickly and pushes it into a protracted campaign of mass killing. Only quite rarely are domestic armed opponents able to defeat regimes quickly. This suggests that the worst of all worlds in terms of an episode’s duration and lethality is not when the state perpetrators are confronted by armed opposition per se but when they are confronted by forces incapable of inflicting a decisive defeat upon them…(p. 8)

]]>0Micah Zenkohttp://blogs.cfr.org/zenko/?p=60722015-07-01T14:08:33Z2015-07-01T14:02:43Z In September 2004, President George W. Bush made a rare acknowledgment about the realistic outcomes of the war...]]>

In September 2004, President George W. Bush made a rare acknowledgment about the realistic outcomes of the war on terrorism in an exchange with Matt Lauer:

Lauer:Do you really think we can win this war on terror in the next four years?

Bush:I have never said we can win it in four years.

Lauer:So I’m just saying, can we win it? Do you see that?

Bush: I don’t think you can win it. But I think you can create conditions so that those who use terror as a tool are less acceptable in parts of the world—let’s put it that way.

This surprising remark came long after President Bush had repeatedly made the maximalist pledge that all global terrorists, as well as their ideology, would be defeated and destroyed. This was the purported strategic objective that was supposedly guiding U.S. counterterrorism strategies. As the February 2003 National Strategy for Combatting Terrorism proclaimed: “Objective: Destroy terrorists and their organizations. Once we have identified and located the terrorists, the United States and its friends and allies will use every tool available to disrupt, dismantle, and destroy their capacity to conduct acts of terror.” Moreover, this guidance was supposedly working; as Bush stated on August 30, 2004, the month before speaking with Lauer: ”I have a clear vision and a strategy to win the war on terror.”

The President’s recognition, said during the height of the presidential campaign, was immediately denounced by Sen. John Kerry’s campaign, which released mildly humorous statements: “Bush Flip-Flops on Winning the War on Terror” and “Bush: Against Winning the War on Terror Before He Was for It.” Kerry’s running mate, John Edwards, proclaimed, “Saying we can’t win one day and flipping around the next day sends exactly the wrong message to the American people, to the world–and most importantly–to the terrorists who seek to harm us.”

The next day, August 31, while addressing the American Legion National Convention, Bush changed course and reverted to articulating the same implausible strategic objective that he had made the previous three years: “We meet today at a time of war for our country, a war we did not start, yet one that we will win…make no mistake about it, we are winning, and we will win. We will win by staying on the offensive. We will win by spreading liberty.”

This brief moment of clarity and honesty made eleven years ago is almost quaint in comparison to how Obama administration officials now describe progress in the war on terrorism. They no longer pretend the war can be won, or that it will even end. The expansion and growth of terrorist organizations that the United States claims it will destroy, and state of perpetual warfare are just something that Americans should accept and get used to. As CIA Director John Brennan noted this April, “It’s been a war that has been in existence for millennia…So this is going to be something, I think, that we’re always going to have to be vigilant about.” In short, the war on terror has always been with us, and it always will be.

I have a new piece in Foreign Policy that proposes a The National Commission on the War on Terrorism, which would consist of ten former officials, diplomats, and experts—with no personal or financial interest in the outcome—who would comprehensively review, evaluate, and offer new policy recommendations. Such commissions are rarely meaningful or impactful. However, current government officials and congressional members are too personally and professionally vested to objectively evaluate current strategies, demonstrate strategic learning, or implement any new policies. In short, U.S. counterterrorism strategy is both failing and frozen. The National Commission on the War on Terrorism would cost less than $4 million, and could be included in an authorization bill today. It would then be formed in the fall, with its conclusions and recommendations made publicly available in January 2017, just in time to inform Obama’s successor and the 115th Congress. It is a low-cost initiative to rethink the war on terrorism, and one that this Congress should pursue.